I was coming back from a class in December 2019 when I received the email that my Fulbright application to research at the University of Eastern Finland in Kuopio was accepted! I had always wanted this type of experience for me professionally, also for my children so they can have the opportunity to see the world bigger than their own backyard.
Based on the grant we would be leaving for an entire year, so there was a lot of logistical details to work out, notwithstanding (1) residence permits, securing housing in Finland, finding schools for our kids, what to do with our house here, school for our kids, and, and, and … Thank goodness we had time to work through this!
Some other tailwinds was that the Fulbright Finland Foundation is a great team to work with – they have a lot of information on their website about what you should do (and in what order).
As a first step were encouraged to get the process for the residence permits. This was a new experience for me – I have never having traveled to long-term to another country. I had to assemble a lot of documentation: letters from Finland, a copy of my graduate degree, and other things. We also realized that we needed to renew our passports for our family first (they would have expired late 2020). Because time was of the essence we decided to expedite our passports so we would be sure to have them in hand for the residence permit application.
Applying for a residence permit is something that the entire family needs to be present for in person – the closest location was the VFS Global Offices in Chicago (rather than traveling to New York or Los Angeles). So on March 11 we packed the family in our SUV and made the 7 hour trip to Chicago.
We were excited for the adventure, and even booked the hotel at the Great Wolf Lodge Waterpark in Gurnee for the kids (it was a little outside of Chicago, but we would take the train in). By and large the visit to VFS was uneventful – it took a long time to get everything processed (all the paperwork was in order, but it wasn’t an in and out event). The weather in Chicago wasn’t amenable to siteseeing the downtown – it was cold and windy even for us Minnesotans.
We did have some good Chicago style pizza before going to VFS. The t-shirt on my son says it all.
Against all this backdrop was COVID. We had been following it on the news in the month leading up to things, but it wasn’t anything more above the noise of the daily news. But the news reports on my phone kept talking about closures – of hotels, shops, and whole cities. Especially on the way back from Wisconsin (which included an overnight in Madison, Wisconsin) the news kept getting more grim. Our world was changing.
